I am attempting to create a RAID 5 array of 4 disks using an on board SATA RAID controller of a ASUS H87 mini ITX motherboard. The OS I am attempting to install is UBUNTU 14.04.1. I have successfully configured it in the BIOS. However, I see them as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd.
Is this normal? I expected to see the disk bundled as a single disk. What do I need to do to mount a raid volume configured in the BIOS setup?
Your board doesn’t have a real RAID controller. Its built-in functionality only works with “DOS”. A modern operating system (one that doesn’t access disks through legacy BIOS mechanisms) needs special drivers to support these RAID arrays. Because of this, it’s known as FakeRAID.
Linux can support this configuration too, using Disk Mapper. However, I recommend switching to regular AHCI mode (in your UEFI setup) and letting Linux handle everything RAID (with MD-RAID). It’s vastly more powerful and stable. I don’t know if Ubuntu Setup provides an easy interface for this, though.
